The Associated Press was the first to report Wednesday that the White House and the Pentagon have agreed to phase out the stop-loss program, which can keep soldiers on duty past their scheduled exits. Currently, according to the wire service, some 13,000 troops are serving under stop-loss, including more than 4,400 National Guard soldiers.

This is an important step in matching the letter to the spirit of the all-volunteer force. When a soldier has completed his military contract, wants to go home, but is forced to stay in the field, he's not exactly a volunteer.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it Wednesday, "I felt particularly in these numbers that it was breaking faith" to keep soldiers in the service after their end date comes up. "To hold them against their will is just not the right thing to do," he said at a Pentagon press conference.

Yet, the Army has had to use stop-loss because it didn't have enough troops available to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last eight years. Now that the Pentagon is planning to draw down troop strength in Iraq, it evidently believes it will have enough people available to deploy without stop-loss.

This comes too late, by the way, to be useful to any members of the Oregon National Guard's 41st Brigade, which is ramping up for a deployment to Iraq this summer. The National Guard will adopt the new no-stop-loss policy in September.